Who Was Karpoori Thakur, Biography, Latest News

He is a famous Indian politician who has held the post of Chief Minister of Bihar twice. For the first time, Karpoori Thakur became the Chief Minister of Bihar in December 1970 and he remained the Chief Minister of Bihar till June 1971. After this, in the month of June in 1977, he once again became the Chief Minister of Bihar and remained in this post till 1979. Karpoori Thakur is also known as Jannayak across the country, which means people's hero!

Bharat Ratna award is to be given to Karpoori Thakur by the Indian Government on 26 January in the year 2024. Bharat Ratna is the highest award of our country. The announcement of awarding Bharat Ratna has been made by the current President of India Draupadi Murmu on 23 January in the year 2024.

Lal Karpoori Thakur of Bihar was born on 24th January in the year 1924 in a village named Pitoujhiya in Bihar state, at that time our country was under the control of the British. He did his early education from a primary school in Bihar and took admission in Patna University to study matriculation. From here, in 1940, he passed the matriculation examination in second division and after this he joined the Quit India Movement of 1942.

Karpuri Thakur was born to father Gokul Thakur and mother Mrs. Raj Dulari Devi. His father belonged to the new caste of Hinduism and was a marginal farmer who, along with farming, practiced his traditional profession as a barber. A barber does the work of cutting people's hair, which is called barber in English. His wife's name was Fulmani Devi.

Due to his involvement in the Quit India Movement, he was captured by the British and kept in the Camp Jail of Bhagalpur for 26 months, from where he was liberated in 1945. In the year 1948, Karpoori Thakur was made the regional minister in the Samajwadi Party of Acharya Narendra Dev and Jayaprakash Narayan. In the same year 1970, Karpoori Thakur succeeded in becoming the Chief Minister of Bihar. Apart from this, he was also continuously associated with the student movement of Loknayak Jayaprakash from 1973 to 1977 and once again in 1977, when there was election for the post of Chief Minister in Bihar, he contested the election from Samastipur in Bihar and after winning from here, he became MP. And once again on 24th January in the year 1977, he got a chance to become the Chief Minister of Bihar for the second time. After this, when mid-term elections were organized by the Election Commission in the year 1980, Lok Dal under the leadership of Karpoori Thakur emerged as the main opposition party in the Bihar Assembly and Karpoori Thakur remained its leader. Karpoori Thakur always had the thought of working for the backward people and Dalits. Therefore, while holding the post of Chief Minister, he gave reservation of about 12% to the backward community i.e. OBC community under the Mungerilal Commission. This reservation was given in the year 1978, which included about 79 castes, out of which 12% of the backward class and 8% of the extremely backward class got the benefit.

Karpoori Thakur considered folk hero Jayaprakash Narayan and socialist thinker Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia as his political gurus. Apart from this, people like Ramsevak Yadav were his staunch friends. For information, we would like to tell that in Bihar, reservation system for backward class people in government jobs was made in 1977 and total 4 programs were made to get power, which are as follows.

1. Polarization of backward classes

2. Propagation of Hindi

3. Socialist ideology

4. To deliver the true benefits of agriculture to the farmers.

Karpoori Thakur was awarded the Bharat Ratna in the year 2024 on the occasion of 26 January i.e. Republic Day. Karpoori Thakur was a person who always worked to advocate the interests of the backward classes. Karpoori Thakur will be the third person from Bihar to receive the Bharat Ratna award. Before this, this award has been given to Bihar-born Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of the country, and Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan has also been awarded Bharat Ratna. Although Bismillah Kha has also been awarded Bharat Ratna, his birthplace was Varanasi city of Uttar Pradesh and his family still resides there.

Despite becoming the Chief Minister of Bihar twice and also the Deputy Chief Minister once, Karpoori Thakur did not have any car of his own. He always traveled by rickshaw because he loved simplicity and did not want to waste the country's money for his personal use. Although he could have taken the car if he wanted but he did not do so. After the death of Karpuri Thakur, Hemwanti Nandan Bahuguna reached his village, where he cried after seeing his ancestral hut house. Freedom fighter Karpoori Thakur held high positions, but despite this he did not build a house for himself anywhere. Around 1970, land was being given by the government for housing to MLAs and former MLAs in Patna at a very low price and many leaders of Karpoori Thakur's legislative party also asked him to take the land but he refused to take the land. He flatly refused.

Loknayak Karpoori Thakur had lost an election only once in his entire life. This election was the Lok Sabha election in 1984. However, he was successful in winning all the assembly elections in his life. After the death of Indira Gandhi, in 1984, Karpoori Thakur, against his wish, had contested as a Lok Dal candidate from Samastipur Lok Sabha seat to try his luck. Due to the assassination of Indira Gandhi, people were very much in touch with the Congress party due to which Karpoori Thakur had to face defeat in this election.

The simplicity of Karpoori Thakur was that, in the year 1977, when Jayaprakash Narayan was celebrating his birthday and invitation was given to many people, at that time Karpoori Thakur was the Chief Minister of Bihar, but after attending the function, he refused to attend the function. Karpoori Thakur wore a torn kurta and reached the function. When many leaders including Chandrashekhar saw this, they collected donations for the Chief Minister's kurta from other leaders and gave the donation to Karpoori Thakur, but he did not buy the kurta with the money donated but donated it to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

Karpoori Thakur also adopted a flexible approach in forming the government. He used to form an alliance with any political party and form a government and if the work was not done as per his wish, he would break the alliance and go away. This is the reason why he made many friends and also many enemies. He died at the age of 64 due to a heart attack on 17 February 1988 in Patna state of Bihar.

Ans: Barber

Ans: 24 January 1924, Pitonjhia, Bihar and Orissa province, British India

Ans: Phoolmani Devi

Ans: 17 February 1988 (age 64)

Ans : 1940